h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tilt shift photography is something I had no idea existed until quite recently, when I immediately became fascinated with the images it produces. Essentially tilt shift photography is a method for making the subject of a photograph appear as a miniature or a hand made model. This can be achieved with both still images as well as movies. In fact there are a number of examples of tilt shift movies on You Tube, and this is one of my favourites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkrtYRxGyuo.

To get a flavour of what can be done with tilt shift photography, this website has plenty of examples: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/beautiful-examples-of-tilt-shift-photography. As you will see, using this technique to create a miniaturised effect is not always successful, but there are some very good images here.

After immersing myself for a while in these kind of images, what then began to fascinate me was the unusual places tilt shift images cropped up. For instance, I recently watched a re-run on BBC of the Survivors pilot episode, and there were a few shots in the early part of the show that received the tilt shift treatment.

I have also seen the tilt shift effect incorporated into TV documentaries. There was a series shown recently about the contributions British scientists made to their respective disciplines, and as with many documentaries, shots that don't really have anything to do with progressing the subject were included. Some curiously enough were tilt shift images.

Yet another TV documentary, about applying forensic techniques to the remains of people long dead, (some remains were hundreds of years old), also included the occasional tilt shift image. The list could go on, but this demonstrates the point that what appears to be just a curious and engaging photographic technique with no substantial application, has in fact been put to creative use. Also, once you are aware of what a tilt shift image is, they can be found in some unexpected places.

Concentrating on TV shows may give the impression that tilt shift photography is beyond the means of those who do not have access to state of the art production equipment, but this is not necessarily the case. Admittedly, if you wanted to create a tilt shift movie then the only realistic way to do this is to buy the correct lens, which for many would be prohibitively expensive. However, whilst still images can be taken with a tilt shift lens it is quite a straightforward process to transform a photograph into a tilt shift image by using graphics manipulation software. You can find out how to do this by following this online tutorial: http://visual-arts.helium.com/how-to/10610-how-to-fake-a-tilt-shift-image-with-gim p.

Hi Atticus. I've just popped over from finally reviewing your Guerilla Gardening entry and I see you are interested in photography.

I wonder whether you're aware of the h2g2 Photographers? We're a group of researchers who provide some of the photographs for entries (both new and existing). A number of photographs for entries come from the BBC stock archives but we try to provide them where we can.

If you're interested, here is the link: A15846438